


Strength

by flightinflame



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Awesome Pepper, Gen, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Protective Pepper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 16:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The strength of some people is obvious.  The ones fighting the battles, winning the wars, are strong.  But sometimes the people in their shadows are strong as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strength

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShadowHaloedAngel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/gifts).



> Betaed by Shadowhaloedangel

Behind every successful man is a woman. That was what the kinder newspapers had pointed out when Miss Potts had taken control of Stark Industries. The crueller ones had simply implied that they were going to fail, that she would lead them to their doom and rob the company of all value. The worst of them had decided to question exactly what she had done to end up with the job. Some had even managed to manufacture photographs for that discussion.

All of them had managed to make “Miss” sound like an insult, an insinuation, and it had hit her hard. She was a woman that was now running an arms company, she had expected people to disapprove, but it still stung. But she carried on, because she had to, because that was what she needed to do. She couldn’t let everyone down, and anyway, she had always been a perfectionist. She wouldn’t let herself fail.

For a while, she was running the company, living with Tony, and things were manageable, even if not good. She was dating a superhero, a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist with a pretty infamous reputation, but she loved him and they were happy. Then aliens had attacked New York.

Looking back on that, she was amused at how shocked she had been. That had seemed an odd occurrence then, rather than something reported several pages into the newspaper, not even worth making the headlines.

But aliens had attacked, and a team had formed, and afterwards they had stuck together, a family of sorts. She continued to run the company, but also helped JARVIS (and, when he returned, Coulson) to look after the pack of superheroes, because without someone keeping an eye on them they’d all eat poptarts and nothing else.

It was then that she and Tony started to drift apart. He was still good to her, still kind, still fond and forgetful and stupid enough to bring her strawberries. But she wasn’t blind. And when she knew his heart lay elsewhere, it was her that was strong enough to let him go, to smile and wish him well and then cry her heart out onto her pillow, in her own room.

Pepper wasn’t weak. She might have been surrounded by superheroes, individuals that ordinary people, people like her, could never compete with, but she wasn’t weak, wasn’t helpless. It wasn’t like that. She was strong in her own way, in a way more normal than any of them could hope to be, and she was proud of that.

Tony needed someone to look after him. She had been brave for him first, walking into Stane’s office to grab the data he needed. She had organised his life even as Tony had turned it upside down, she had run the company when he was dead. She had cried on his return, but he knew that didn’t mean she was weak, just showed how strong she was. She had helped him remember to eat, gone and pulled him from the lab when JARVIS couldn’t make him listen. She had even stuck her fingers into his chest, pulled out the wires and given him a chance at life. She was one of his oldest friends, and he would always be dearer to her than anyone else in his own way, but she understood that relationships changed and she let it happen.

Natasha was strong in a way quite different from Pepper, and she didn’t need help. She refused it, and got violently offended when help was offered. But she still liked having someone to relax with, someone who could go some small way to understanding her life. They had destroyed Hammer together, with Natasha’s physical strength and Pepper’s organisation. The two of them made a good team, more so now that Pepper knew the truth about Natasha, and she had been able to forgive her the lies. She did miss the PA sometimes, but an honest friendship mattered more.

Thor was simple enough, and Pepper was less strong for him than kind. The god respected her, never treated her as less – in Asgard, no one ever considered women to be weaker than men. What she did to help him was organise flights and phone calls, manage to make time for him to contact his beloved, and he was grateful for it.

Clint just needed trust after what had happened, the promise of forgiveness, and somewhere to hide when he mourned. She opened her heart, arms and office to him, reassured him that he had not been able to control what Loki had done, and held him as he cried. When he was done, he’d smiled at her, and she knew he’d have her back in a fight, if it ever came to that.

Steve was a gentleman, and old fashioned, but he’d known many strong women in a previous life. His mother, a nurse, sounded remarkable, and what little he was able to tell of Peggy made Pepper respect her a great deal. Sometimes, he needed someone to protect, and she was willing to give him that, to help him have a sense of purpose. She could put her pride to one side and let him keep her safe when he was desperate for that familiarity, that safety.

Coulson was probably her closest friend. She was fond of him since they met, and few were gladder than her at his return. It was easy to talk to him, and she found herself relaxed by his presence – he had a better idea of what she did than the rest of the team did, and it was always nice to know that she could impress him. The two of them sometimes had to act like parents for the team, and after work coffee and chat was a stable feature of both their lives, when they could pretend for a few minutes that their lives were simple. Then, more often than not, a superhero would crash through the ceiling and work would start again.

Bruce was an odd one, someone it was hard to be strong for, because of what had happened to him. He needed protection himself, he was fragile and tormented, but on the other side of the coin, the Hulk was protective and sheer strength, not the intelligence of the scientist but the muscle of an animal. She did what she could for both of them, bringing Bruce coffee and arranging magazine subscriptions, listening as he rambled on as she had once done for Tony, and then sitting with Hulk’s head against her knee, ruffling the hair and telling him how well he had fought.

Pepper would make herself be strong for all of them, would listen to the insults and not let them cut her. She had a purpose, and without her they would fall apart. In her eyes at least, her team were worth fighting for.


End file.
